Things you'll see for the first time at the Paris Olympics (2024)

People watching the Olympics are going to have the choice of 30 different sports to tune into this summer, with many of them a staple of the games.

Popular fixtures like running, boxing and equestrian events have been going since the Olympics' conception in ancient Greece.

But every so often new sports and categories are introduced to modernise and freshen up the iconic event, and there's no shortage of additions this year.

Here's a look at what they are and how they will work.

Breaking to make Olympic debut

This sport, more popularly known as breakdancing, is entirely new to the games and will see 16 men and 16 women compete in dance-offs.

A round robin is followed by quarterfinals, semi-finals and then medal battles, with the athletes, referred to as B-Boys and B-Girls, being scored by nine judges on the following criteria:

• Creativity
• Personality
• Technique
• Variety
• Performativity
• Musicality

And unlike other sports, B-Boys and B-Girls can only go in somewhat prepared, because they aren't told what music they'll be dancing to - they have to improvise once they hear the DJ start playing.

While this is new to the Olympics, international breaking competitions have taken place since the 1990s, after the dance style broke out in the United States in the 1970s.

Breaking joins other recently established "urban" sports including skateboarding, surfing, sport climbing and BMXing.

The competition will on debut on 9 August at La Concorde, a historic square at the end of the Champs-Elysees. Be sure to watch it while you can, because breaking isn't set to feature at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

Who is favourite for gold in breaking?

B-Boy Victor - or Victor Montalvo - claimed gold in the 2023 world championship, making him a firm favourite. The 30-year-old has plenty of experience and has the added motivation of ensuring he brings the first breaking Olympic medal to the US, where the breakdancing craze first began.

Then there's fellow 2023 world champion Dominika Banevic, AKA B-Girl Nicka, who's looking to get an Olympic medal at the first time of asking aged just 16.

She may not have the same experience as someone like Victor, but the Lithuanian teen has been breakdancing since she was five years old.

Climbing has a new format

Not only is climbing bigger than it was when it made its debut at Tokyo 2020 - with 68 competitors instead of 40 - it's also been split into two categories.

There was a single combined event for each gender at the last games, combining the sport's three disciplines: speed, bouldering and lead.

But this time the speed discipline has been split off into a standalone event, while bouldering and lead will remain combined into one event.

The aim of speed climbing is simply to scale a high wall as quickly as possible.

Bouldering competitors must scale multiple short but challenging routes, called "boulder problems," with the fewest attempts in a given period of time.

Bouldering is combined with lead, which judges climbers on how high they can climb on a 50ft wall in six minutes.

Kayak cross - 'canoeing's Fast and Furious'

It's canoeing like you've never seen it before on the biggest stage.

With kayak cross, previously known as extreme slalom, you'll see four competitors race each other to the finish line at the same time, rather than racing the clock.

It's a combination of all white-water disciplines, with competitors racing in plastic creek boats on a course featuring up to six downstream gates and two upstream gates.

It's an all-action affair, with athletes permitted to make contact with each others' kayaks unless it borders on the dangerous.

The gruelling challenge is made even more difficult because each athlete must also complete a compulsory eskimo roll - a 360-degree flip where the rower must dip below water and come back up.

It's exciting watching any competitors battle it out - but it might help to know that many Team GB canoeists have already enjoyed great success in the discipline since its introduction in 2015, with Rio 2016 gold champion Joe Clarke winning back-to-back world titles in 2021, 2022 and 2023 and Kimberley Woods taking the world title last year.

They'll both be looking to win gold at the Olympics this year - though kayak cross is known to be a particularly unpredictable discipline.

Sailing to reach new heights

There will be two new sailing events in Paris and interestingly, both look to take the sailor out of the water.

There's iQFOiL, a format of windsurfing where the main difference with the old Olympic format, RS:X, is that the daggerboard is replaced by a foil.

Foiling boats are lightweight and have hydrofoils attached to the bottom, meaning the board is lifted completely out of the water at high speeds rather than merely hovering.

Then there's kiteboarding, and what you need to know is in the name - it's a high-octane sport that propels athletes across the water's surface while holding a 7-18m kite to harness the power of the wind.

Other changes at the 2024 games

This summer's games will also see some changes made to established competitions:

Artistic swimming: For the first time in Olympic history, men can be included in the artistic swimming competition, previously known as synchronised swimming.

Male swimmers have been dazzling spectators in world championship artistic swimming since 2015, but it's only now that they've been able to do so in Olympic waters thanks to a rule change by World Aquatics.

But despite the change, not one team added a man to its roster.

World Aquatics released a statement after teams were announced, saying Paris should have been "a landmark moment for the sport" and that they were "very disappointed".

Boxing: A new women's weight class has been added, and a men's class has been cut, meaning there will be seven men's weight categories and six women's.

Shooting: The mixed skeet team event replaces mixed team trap event.

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Track and field: A new race-walking format called the mixed team relay will make its debut. Twenty-five teams will participate in the race, each made up of one male and one female athlete, who will complete the marathon distance in four stages.

Also in track and field, a repechage round will be introduced for all individual track events from 200m to 1500m (including hurdles).

Essentially it means athletes who do not qualify by finishing in the automatic qualifying positions in round one heats will have a second chance to qualify for the semi-finals by participating in repechage heats.

Volleyball: At the Paris Games, teams will be separated into three pools of four, with each team playing only three matches total in the pool phase.

This differs to previous Olympics, when the men's and women's volleyball fields of 12 teams had been split into two pools of six, with each team playing five matches total in the pool phase.

Weightlifting: The number of weight classes has been reduced from 14 to 10.